


It's a cheat somewhere

by Solshine



Category: Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (Music Video)
Genre: I'm not even trying to tag them with my made up character names, M/M, i don't know what this is, turn away don't look don't remember me this way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 15:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5876644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Dominik Vergoldetschnauz would have enough problems if Agent Bradley Ellington were only his nemesis. Unfortunately, it's more complicated than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I... I really don't know, guys. This is extremely self-indulgent. After fighting myself for every word in most of my writing for a while, I banged 9/10ths of this out in 2 hours in the middle of the night????? I guess it was good for me, then. Just a hopelessly derivative riff on that amazing music video which I've watched 500 times.
> 
> Edit, 2018: Tysmiha has written a big amazing remix of this silly little thing, and there’s a link to it at the end!!! ITS SO GOOD and I’m so honored wtfffffff

It isn't even the fact that this smug secret agent (they're all smug, Dr. Dominik Vergoldetshnauz has never met a secret agent that wasn't smug) shows up at exactly the wrong moment and ruins his hypnosis caper after he spent weeks putting that shit together. It's that he shows up in some kind of slubby sweater, like this whole thing interrupted his weekend plans and he couldn't be bothered to change. The machinery goes up in smoke and the governor is ushered away without a scratch on him and Dr. Dominik really, really would like to rip that smug sweater right off the agent and tear it into fluffy bits of yarn. Because he's angry. He wants to rip it off because he's angry. Anyway, he's too busy evacuating himself and his undamaged supplies. Never mind the sweater.

The next time Dr. Dominik encounters him, it's at the ambassadors’ ball, where he's just about to walk on stage and announce the presence of his bomb under the banquet hall. The agent steps out of a dark doorway and says “So we meet again,” because sure he does. Is there a class in agent training academy on how to say that exact phrase in the smuggest possible tone? This guy must have passed with flying colors.

“Agent Bradley Ellington,” the man says, which is great because Dominik definitely did not ask.

“Dr. Dominik Vergoldetschnauz,” he sneers, “as I imagine you are aware.” He's at least dressed like he meant to be here this time, which is an improvement. It's not even the usual agent monkey suit, this is a full-blown tuxedo; he must have been attending the ball on his assignment. Well. It looks better than the stupid sweater anyway.

“Give it up, Dr. Vergoldetshnauz," Agent Ellington says coolly, even pronounces it correctly. Dominik grants the guy a single nod of acknowledgement before he snaps his fingers and his hidden goons grab Agent Ellington. The man saves the ambassadors’ ball anyway, of course--teach Dominik to leave his henchmen to handle a captured agent--but for a second there the look on Ellington’s face is priceless.

(He vents to Barbara when he gets home. She's very understanding. Barbara is always very understanding. It's not her fault. “You know I want you to follow your passions,” she says, “but leave it at work, okay? The world domination thing, it's fine, just not in our house. For the children's sake.” He gets that. He does his best.)

It goes on like that for a while. Pretty soon it seems like Ellington is the only agent he ends up meeting anymore, which is fine with Dominik. One nemesis makes it much easier to predict and foil. Not that, y’know, he's done a lot of foiling thus far, but he's working on it. Ellington, meanwhile, mostly seems to be working on his one liners and, weirdly, excuses to wear a tux. Whatever, it's not a sweater. (Dominik starts keeping an iron at work to touch up his collar on his uniform.) They have a lot of mid-caper chats flavored heavily with wry sarcasm and hand-to-hand combat. Well, sarcasm on Dominik's part. Ellington seems more fond of puns, and he delivers them with a self-pleased little twinkle that makes Dominik have to remind himself not to smirk.

\---

The night it changes is on the radio tower. 

They're grappling over a remote control, and Dominik’s foot slips on a rain-wet ladder rung. And maybe there's a tiny part of him that figured this would be how it happened, nothing but his nose left identifiable in the mess it would leave on the pavement, and he's sorry to leave little Alex and Lizzie but he's sure Barbara would make up something nice--

Ellington grabs his wrist. Their eyes meet and the agent looks as surprised as Dominik feels, but then he grits his teeth and reaches out with his other hand too. He pulls Dominik back onto the ladder, and they both hang there, panting, staring at each other, rain dripping off Dominik’s nose, gathering in Ellington's eyelashes.

Dr. Vergoldetschnauz presses the button on the remote and a yacht in the harbor explodes. Agent Ellington looks even more surprised. He just hangs there looking surprised, even as Dominik’s getaway helicopter finally shows up and airlifts him out.

Dominik is furious. 

Agent Ellington has to die.

\---

Barbara doesn't understand. She tries to. For a while she pretends she does. He starts sketches on his death ray and she tries to comfort him, encourage him, something. He knows she's trying, but he can hear the distance in his voice as he reassures her without looking up from his sketches. She goes quiet and turns out her light, turns over. 

Dominik wonders suddenly if there's someone on the other side of Bradley Ellington’s bed who didn't understand the story of the radio tower either. His chest hurts like he fell off the tower after all and the tip of his pen goes through four pages of sketchbook.

Dammit.

“This is getting unhealthy,” Barbara tells him a week later as he's doing laser calculations after dinner. “You need to at least be there for the kids, Dom, even if you're not for me.” It's sharper than usual and he looks up.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he snaps, as though he doesn't already know. He almost says “as if you ever talk to our goddamn kids, at least I--” but no, that's not fair, that isn't the point. “He's got to go,” he says instead, and returns to his notes.

“That much we agree on,” she says, and goes to bed. She'll feel better once he's dead, Dominik thinks. We both will.

\---

The death ray requires some supplies from a government research laboratory, so Dominik pulls out an old sonic disabling field generator for the errand. It's not Ellington's purview, but he's not that shocked that he shows up. (He's not shocked, but his heart stutters anyway.)

“What's this one about, hmm, Doctor?” says the agent, as Dominik and his henchmen walk out of the lab, arms full of equipment. “Who dies this time?” His eyes are challenge and… hurt?Still sore about the yacht, Dominik notes distantly. Funny, he’d already forgotten about it himself.

“Wouldn't you like to know,” he says, voice flat, and activates the sonic pylon behind Ellington. He walks away while Ellington falls to his knees, clutching his ears.

\---

It's finally ready. 

His henchmen are more worried about him at this point than Barbara is, although anymore it feels like that's not much of a stretch. He's sure even the kids have picked up on some of the tension stretched between their parents, despite how hard he's worked to keep it from affecting them.

“It’ll all be over today,” he says to Barb, hoping he doesn't sound like he's trying to convince himself. If she notices, she doesn't comment for once. She just gives him an uncertain smile, and kisses him off to work.

It's almost hilarious how easy it is to lure Ellington out. He sends a casually traceable countdown clock to the headquarters and Ellington is there by evening, just this side of unshaven and in an immaculate tuxedo for no reason whatsoever.

“Here to put a stop to my latest destruction, Ellington?” he smirks, as the Agent struggles against a goon on either arm. “Would you like to see at last the results of my little science project?”

“What are you going to use it against?” Ellington demands. “What was the countdown for?”

Dr. Vergoldetschnauz laughs. “How uncharacteristically modest of you,” he says, and waves at his henchmen to bring in the table with the cuffs. “Who else would it be for?” Ellington’s eyes are wide and surprised when they grab him.

“Wire in the jacket, sir,” says one of his men as they wrestle Ellington to the table. 

“Get rid of it,” Dominik says. This is a private moment. (Except for all the henchmen, that is.) He turns away to the controls and wonders again if Ellington has anyone who will miss him. He thinks about asking, guised in some jibe about a next of kin, but no smart agent would answer that truthfully. Dominik doesn't get to know that, dammit, he doesn't get to know anything worth knowing.

He snatches the remote from an assistant. This is over now.

The end-of-shift buzzer rings and the henchmen disperse.

This is over tomorrow.

\---

Barbara knows as soon as he walks in the door. She's silent through most of the dinner and goes to sleep without so much as a goodnight. Dominik hardly notices. He lasts to just a few minutes after Barbara goes to sleep. Fuck the union, fuck overtime pay, he can't wait to do this in the morning. (It has nothing to do with Agent Ellington on a cold metal cot all night, nothing to do with the woman lying next to him facing the wall all night.)

The death ray fires up again, the current glowing lurid pink in the cables above them. Ellington is scared to die. It's plain in his face, in the fruitless struggle he can't help but make against his bonds. Dominik stares at his fear, transfixed, until Ellington tears his gaze from the machine and locks eyes with him.

“Doctor!” he says. Dominik looks down quickly at his two button remote. Who designed this shit? This is not what he specified. This is why nobody's getting overtime pay for this. “Dr. Vergoldetschnauz!" Ellington says more urgently over the crackle. He turns away, refusing to hear.

“Dominik?” Ellington says this time, and his voice is quieter, more unsure.

“I seem,” says Dominik in what is meant to be his absolute wryest banter voice, his back to the ray and the man beneath it, “to have fallen for my nemesis. Isn't that the best joke you’ve heard all week?” The bantering tone is cracking at the edges.

He pushes the green button, and the restraints open. He doesn't watch as Ellington makes his retreat, just orders his men down.

He's fucked, is what he is. Well and truly. Professionally, personally, domestically. He's fucked. Part of him is afraid Ellington will never take another mission with Dr. Vergoldetschnauz's name on the folder, but part of him is afraid he _will,_ god, wouldn’t _that_ be humiliating…

Behind him, Agent Ellington clears his throat. 

“Interesting,” he says hoarsely, “that you assume I wouldn't reciprocate. What was your phrase? Uncharacteristically modest of you.”

Dominik turns around slowly. Ellington is smiling, nervous but hopeful, and Dominik starts to feel a matching grin growing on his own lips.

\---

 

“I’m not even German,” Dominik says.

They're sitting on the roof of his lair, the sun just starting to pinken the horizon. He's sent his henchmen home to their families, and the death ray in the basement is unplugged, cold and inert. They are sitting with their feet dangling over the edge, and Ellington’s--Bradley’s--hand over Dominik's on the cement between them.

“Well,” Bradley smirks, “it sounds good anyway.”

Dominik casts a sidelong glance at Bradley’s white shirt and black bowtie. “Okay, here's one I'm wondering. Why the tuxedos?”

Bradley looks down at it himself, biting his lip over a smile. “I was under the impression that you liked the tuxedos.”

Dominik gives a bark of surprised laughter. “That was why?” He grins slyly at the other man. “You know what I liked? That thing you wore the first time we met. The sweater.” Bradley groans and covers his face with his free hand, and Dominik laughs. “Yes, the argyle number!”

“That was so embarrassing,” Bradley says from behind his hand. “They called me up while I was having lunch with my--”

“I knew it!” Dominik crows triumphantly. “I knew you'd been interrupted. I doubted the agency had casual Fridays.”

Bradley chuckles, shaking his head. “It was so unprofessional of me.”

“Nah,” says Dominik. “Like I said, I liked it.” He pauses. “Lunch with your…? Sorry, I interrupted you.”

“Oh. Lunch with my mother, actually.”

“Ah.” Dominik fidgets. “So not your… You're not…” He licks his lips and tries again. “You don't have a…?”

“A…? Oh! No,” says Bradley, smiling again. “No, I'm… single.” Dominik nods, looking out at the growing dawn and looking pensive.

“I have a wife,” he says. Bradley's smile falters.

“Oh.”

“And two kids.”

“Oh god.”

Dominik glances at him and chuckles ruefully under his breath. “I guess we already knew who was the bad guy between the two of us anyway,” he says. 

Bradley squeezes his hand. “We’ll figure something out,” he says. “We’ll make it work.”

They smile at each other. In a few hours Bradley Ellington will go back to base to report the threat neutralized. Dominik will go home to find Barbara’s side of the closet empty and a note on the kitchen table about him picking up the kids from school. In a few hours this will all become confusing and complicated, but for right now it's not.

For right now, they’ve made up their minds and they know themselves perfectly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bradley's perspective cuz I'm trash and my WIP is going slowly. And no, you're not crazy, I did take the 'e' off the end of Vergoldetschnauz's name because it looks better. I can do that! I'm the author!

“You know, Ethel’s son just left his husband,” his mother is saying as he’s about to take a bite of his salad. Bradley Ellington puts his fork down and looks at her.

“Mother, come on, really?”

“I’m just trying to help you out, honey,” she sighs. “It's been such a long time since Christopher, and--”

“I can handle my own love life,” he insists, stabbing a crouton. “Anyway, I think I can do better than someone who just left his husband.”

“There aren't that many single people at your age,” she warns as his pager buzzes. “You can't be so choosy.”

“Shit!”

“Language.”

Sorry, Mum, I have to go,” he says, standing up and hurriedly pulling a few bills from his pocket. “Work emergency.”

“This is why, you know,” she says, tilting up her cheek to collect the kiss he’s bending down to deliver. “You're dating your job.”

“We'll try lunch again tomorrow.”

“Sure. Go save the world.”

It's a minor hypnosis machine scheme with the kidnapped governor, but at least it's a mission. The perpetrator is someone he hasn't seen before, a Dr. Dominik Vergoldetschnauz going by the dossier. He… keeps staring, the whole time he's being thwarted, and finally Bradley figures out it's because he's still wearing his goddamn argyle sweater, shit. Shit.

He’s so embarrassed, he gets out of there with the governor as quickly as possible without attempting a single one-liner. 

\---

 

The next time he gets handed a dossier with Dr. Vergoldetschnauz’s name on it, it actually has Bradley’s name on it too, instead of the crossed out name of someone who got the flu. It's a good feeling. It's at the ambassadors’ ball, so he rents himself a tux and spends a bit of time on his hair. He's capable of looking professional at work, dammit.

He feels much better about the stare Dr. Vergoldetschnauz gives him this time. “Agent Bradley Ellington,” he says with a charmingly crooked smirk, as he needlessly straightens a cuff.

“Dr. Dominik Vergoldetschnauz, as I imagine you are aware,” the other man sneers, his lip curling under his gold prosthetic.

It's going really well up until he's too busy posing to notice the goons popping out of the shadows to grab his arms. Dr. Vergoldetschnauz smirks right back at him.

It's a very distracting smirk. He can't properly start escaping until the man has turned around and left.

\---

Once the agency figures out that he’s reliable enough against this particular adversary, they give him the gig as a dedicated assignment. Things are finally looking up, he thinks. Some recognition at work, some real field work for once. His mother is still pestering him to get a date, but she doesn't understand that these things come one at a time. Career first, love life second.

He invests in his own tuxedo so that he can keep it in his car just in case. Better overdressed than underdressed, right? Confidence is attractive. Not that that’s… It’s just nice to really feel good about his life for once. He hums along to the radio on the way to the office; he cracks puns on missions and his nemesis fights not to smile.

The smiles are even better than the smirk.

\---

The night it changes is on the radio tower.

He doesn't even think about it, when it happens. One second they're wrestling for the remote control, and the next second he’s got a vice grip on Vergoldetschnauz’s wrist and Bradley's the only thing keeping him from the 500 foot drop. The reality of this only sets in a second later, and very suddenly the height that wasn't bothering him a bit before is filling his stomach with rocks. He lets go of the rung he was holding with his other hand and hooks an elbow precariously over it instead, and hauls Dr. Vergoldetschnauz back onto the tower.

They stare at each other in silence. Their faces are very close.

Something that looks a lot like anger flashes into his enemy's eyes, and with a snarl he stabs the button on the remote. Bradley pulls back, startled--he'd forgotten about the remote completely--and then startles even more at the sound of an explosion in the harbor behind him.

No one-liner comes to him. Not a single word, even as the helicopter flies Dr. Vergoldetschnauz away into the stormy night.

\---

“We'd come to expect better of you by now, Ellington,” his boss frowns.

“Very sorry, sir,” Bradley says, chin lifted. “Won't happen again.”

“I should think not,” is the retort. “And for there to be civilian casualties--”

“Well, lobbyists,” Bradley mutters without thinking. His boss's eyebrows go up.

“What?”

“Political lobbyists, sir. I was just saying, all the victims--”

“Are you suggesting,” says his boss slowly, “that they do not count as civilians, or as casualties?”

Bradley winces. “Neither, sir. Sorry. Irrelevant, sir.”

To be brutally honest, he doesn't care much about the yacht itself. He cares that Vergoldetschnauz pushed the button, he cares that he looked so angry when he did it. He cares that he cares about these things even though they make perfect sense in their professional context.

He asks surveillance to put him on call for Dr. Vergoldetschnauz on even minor capers. They figure he’s trying to redeem himself; they're not wrong. The laboratory theft doesn't tell him anything, though, except that the awful, closed-off look hasn't left the other man’s eyes.

\---

He knows something is wrong from the moment he gets to the lair. 

Dr. Vergoldetschnauz’s manner is back to how it was before, but bright and brittle in a terrible way. There's a huge, visually effective piece of mysterious but probably very dangerous machinery hanging from the ceiling, new since Bradley was last here.

“What are you going to use it against?” he asks. “What was the countdown for?”

Dr. Vergoldetschnauz’s laughter is grating. “How uncharacteristically modest of you,” he says. “Who else would it be for?”

Bradley looks at the gurney a henchman is rolling in, equipped with arm and leg restraints. The man parks it right under the piece of machinery.

Oh.

_Oh._

Bradley looks back at Vergoldetschnauz feeling like he's been doused in ice water. Four goons are ordered to get him onto the table; he's so shocked and disoriented it probably wouldn't have taken two.

The buzz of the shift clock doesn't feel like a reprieve at all as he watches Dr. Vergoldetschnauz walk away without even a backward glance. The henchmen all file out of the bunker, and as the last white-coated scientist leaves, the lights shut off, and Bradley is alone.

He lies in the dim glow of the emergency lighting and stares up at the equipment--the death ray, let's call it what it is--and wonders why he's so confused. His mortal enemy wants him dead. Why should that be surprising? But it is. He tries it different ways to see if they make more sense. His nemesis is going to kill him. Dr. Vergoldetschnauz wants him to die. Dominik Vergoldetschnauz hates him so much that…

Somehow, absurdly, that turns out to be the surprising part. Dominik doesn't like him. It's ridiculous for his chest to hurt, his eyes to sting, but there's nobody to see. Dominik hates him and soon he’s going to die. He doesn't want to. Things were going so well, he was happy. There are so many things he still wants to do. 

He wishes he could call his mother one more time. It's that thought he falls asleep on, frowning even in his dreams.

\---

GIt doesn't feel like he's been sleeping long when the lights snap on and the silence is broken by the marching boots of the henchmen returning to their stations. Dominik, too, returns to his post, restless and agitated. He wastes no time firing the ray back up.

The sound it makes is ghastly. He wonders if it will cook him like a microwave, or turn him to ash, or just stop his heart. He looks at Dominik and finds his eyes pinned to Bradley. 

“Doctor!” he pleads. The man’s eyes widen, almost as though in panic, and he looks down at his remote. “Dr. Vergoldetschnauz!” he tries again. Vergoldetschnauz turns away. His silhouette from behind is hunched and stiff. Bradley licks his lips, swallows. 

“Dominik?” he says in a small voice barely louder than the death ray.

He doesn't turn around, but he speaks at last, and his voice is even more brittle than before. “I seem,” he says, “to have fallen for my nemesis. Isn't that the best joke you’ve heard all week?”

Bradley's mind goes completely blank.

He's… he's done _what?_

The restraints on the gurney open and he rolls off the bed on pure reflex. He sees Dominik order his men down out of the corner of his eye, but the fear of death is still on him and it keeps him running almost to the door.

Then he stops. 

Fallen for…?

There's a smile pulling at his lips before he quite knows why. His chest feels much lighter all of a sudden, and also very unstable. He turns around. Dominik is still standing there, turned away and hunched up as if against a cold wind. Bradley takes a deep breath.

“Interesting,” he says in as steady a voice as he can manage, “that you assume I wouldn't reciprocate. What was your phrase? Uncharacteristically modest of you.”

Dominik turns slowly around, and this smile… this one is the best yet.

\---

After they watch the sun rise, Bradley drives Dominik to the commuter train station, then starts back toward the agency. He's not sure what he's going to say in his report, but until he and Dominik figure out their next steps, it has to be done.

Instead of planning it, he pushes a button on his dashboard. As it dials a phone number, he starts to grin again.

“Hello?”

“Morning, Mum,” he says. “How are you? Are you free for lunch today?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As requested--their first date. Well, kind of. ;)

As soon as Bradley's beeper goes off, his heart sinks.

He's standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving, trying to get it _perfect._ The beeper is on his belt, hanging over the bedroom door, and he peers sideways at it in the mirror, as though judging whether it would leap down and come after him if he tried to run away. He was even considering not taking it with him tonight, agency be damned. If it had only waited a couple more hours…

He sighs, puts down his razor, and goes over to check it. Code 14, car on the way. Shit.

He finishes shaving and picks up a piece of paper on the dresser that makes him smile. Bradley dials the number as he pulls his socks on standing up, phone cradled in one shoulder and the other leaning on the wall by the phone.

It picks up on the second ring, which makes him smile again. “Hello?” says the voice on the other end, a little breathlessly.

“Hi Dominik, it's me. Uh, Bradley,” he adds needlessly.

“Yeah, yes, hi,” says Dominik. “Actually, I was just about to call you. I am so sorry, I'm afraid I have to cancel tonight.”

He shouldn't feel so disappointed when he was about to do the same thing. It's extremely silly. He scolds himself silently. “Oh, that's okay,” he says out loud. “I mean, not okay, but you're fine--”

“I really am sorry,” Dominik insists, and he sounds so _forlorn_ that Bradley can't help but grin. “I was really looking forward to it, but something… came up. I'm sorry, I do want to reschedule.”

“No, it's really okay,” Bradley says, pulling on the other sock, hopping in place a little to do it. “I was calling to postpone too. I--” He looks at the pager he’s set down on the dresser, and thinks about his would-be date’s rather opposing line of work. “I had an emergency. I was looking forward to it too. How’s next Tuesday sound?”

“Tuesday is great,” says Dominik, sounding relieved. “Same time?”

“Sure,” says Bradley. “See you then.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

“Bye,” says Bradley again, then flushes and hangs up a little too hard. He’s still smiling, though. What is it about this man that makes him act like a teenager? He really is incredibly silly.

Right. Code 14.

He finishes getting dressed and goes out to meet the black car that's already waiting outside his building.

The folder they hand him has only a couple sheets of paper in it, one with an aerial photo and one with less than half a page of text. “Reconnaissance?” he says to the woman in the black suit sitting on the back seat next to him. 

She nods once. “Severe power fluctuations in the area,” she says. “Prompted us to send some choppers in. Unregistered building with signs of activity. We don't know who’s responsible yet, but hopefully you can take care of it before it becomes an issue. Any questions?” There is a silence as Bradley stares straight through the paper in his hand. “Agent Ellington. Any questions?”

He shakes himself out of his thoughts. “Oh, sorry. Just, er, strategizing. No questions.”

It's sad, but he just doesn't seem to care about all this as much as he used to. He thinks it's sad. It's probably sad? He imagines what Dominik’s smile looked like when they agreed on Tuesday. It sounded like he was smiling. It was probably a lot like the smile when Bradley dropped him off at the train that morning, when Bradley waved as he drove away and felt stupid, but it was fine because Dominik turned around and--

“Agent Ellington!”

“Right, right,” he says, pretending he heard a word of whatever she just said. “Chopper drop?”

“No,” says the agent. That was probably what she just said, he guesses. “We have a secure route for you nearby but you'll be taking the rest on foot. We have a standard infiltration kit for you when we arrive.”

“Sure, good,” he says, and spends the rest of the ride acting like he's not daydreaming about someone who's ever been in a mission dossier.

\---

“Sir? The helicopters?” says the henchman standing next to him. He sounds like he's said it a couple of times already.

“Yes, we’re being infiltrated,” Dominik Vergoldetschnauz sighs. “I remember.”

He dislikes infiltrations; they're rarely very interesting. Thwartings, now those were much more entertaining, especially ever since Agent Ellington--

The thought breaks off into a smothered smile. “Uh, post a guard on the perimeter,” he says, because the henchman is still standing there waiting for an order. 

He suppresses another sigh as the man nods and hurries off. This particular project hasn't had his full attention for weeks, what with the death ray, and the troubles with his wife--well, ex-wife soon, he modifies mentally, thinking of the papers sitting on their dresser at home. His dresser. The twinge that accompanies the thought has more to do with a sense of failure than anything.

He busies himself with rechecking the security overrides on the shrink ray. Not that he hasn't checked it several times already, but it's always embarrassing to have the sidekick manage to hack your own equipment while you're otherwise engaged or something. Besides, it makes his pensive frown come off as ‘concentration’ rather than ‘brooding.’ He's been accused of brooding by a couple of his men recently.

It is most decidedly not brooding, for the record. It is very justified concern over fraternizing with the enemy, and whether the enemy has stopped to consider who he's actually fraternizing with, and what he’ll do when he does. And he said he had an emergency, what exactly does ‘emergency’ mean--

“Sir, heat signature appearing at the edge of property, east side, heading this way.”

Dominik comes back to himself with a start. “Good, good,” he says. “Position a squad on door three in preparation to capture. We’ll find out what they know first.”

The squad he ordered takes up their positions, and Dominik stands on the scaffolding by his shrink ray and joins his hands behind his back, waiting. A technician seated at a computer watches the heat signature of the intruder approach.

“One hundred meters,” he says. The room is all tense silence. The men at the door ready their guns.

“Fifty meters,” says the technician. Dominik wishes he was not here. He wishes he was at the Italian restaurant where he had to cancel his reservation. Maybe this will be over quickly and he won't have to pay the babysitter for the whole evening, anyway.

“Ten meters,” says the technician. And a moment later, the door opens. 

Agent Bradley Ellington pulls his gun up to eye level quickly at the sight of the dozen men with their own guns trained on him. He looks even more surprised, however, when he sees Dominik standing up on his scaffolding. 

Dominik’s stomach twists. This is it, he thinks. This is going to be the moment that breaks the illusion that they could have ever had something together, this is where Ellington’s oath as a special agent comes first and they go back to being enemies…

Bradley giggles.

Dominik blinks. He starts to smile in spite of himself. He can't giggle, he's got a reputation to uphold in front of his men, but it comes close.

Bradley lowers his gun, his face split into a grin. Dominik realizes belatedly that he should order his men down, but most of them are already lowering their guns too, and the ones who didn't are getting elbows in their ribs.

“I thought you said you didn't usually get these kinds of assignments,” Dom says.

“I don't,” chuckles Bradley, bolstering his weapon. “But apparently it was--” 

“An emergency,” finishes Dominik. He's grinning too now.

“So what's this thing for?” Bradley says, tilting his head to the shrink ray.

“Oh, uh. Shrink ray. Beam directed with satellites, can be directed anywhere in the northern hemisphere.” He stars descending the scaffolding and waves off the squad, who disperse to their original posts.

“What are you planning to shrink?” Are? Not were. Interesting.

“The current plan is the entire US Senate until they learn to actually make a decision,” he says, “but I'm flexible.”

Bradley laughs. “Something in between a hostage situation and time-out?” He looks up admiringly at the machine. “They could use it.”

Dominik stands next to Bradley and looks sideways at him. “Um, just to be clear,” he says. “You’re not planning to… thwart?”

Bradley turns his head to look at Dom, his eyes twinkling. “Nah,” he says. “I’d rather just go get coffee. If you're free.”

“You know, I think I am,” Dominik smirked. “My schedule seems to have freed itself up unexpectedly.” He pauses. “I did have a reservation at an Italian place,” he says apologetically.

Bradley shakes his head. “Coffee is just fine with me.”

“Do you have to send a report to your headquarters or--?”

Bradley looks at his watch. “I've got another couple hours to account for being captured and monologued at before they start getting curious,” he says.

“I don't monologue,” Dom says, frowning. “Who monologues at you? Who takes a couple of _hours_ to monologue?”

Bradley laughs lightly. “You monologue a little bit,” he says, and takes Dominik’s hand. “Come on,” he says. “I know a place with great muffins and a parking lot big enough to land a helicopter in.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Right to Ask](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13766085) by [tysmiha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysmiha/pseuds/tysmiha)
  * [The Heart of Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13909290) by [tysmiha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysmiha/pseuds/tysmiha)




End file.
